TEACHING VOCABULARY
1
Penny Ur
Bnei Brak, February 2015
1. Some basic facts about
vocabulary
Reviewing terminology
word
lexeme
morpheme
denotation
connotation
collocation
Defining vocabulary
The lexical items of a language; including words and
lexical chunks, but not grammatical items.
Lexical words, composed of one morpheme
big, man
or more than one
going, beautiful
lexical chunks (also called lexical phrases, phrasal
expressions, memorized sequences, formulaic
utterances, idioms etc.)may take the form of:
a) Fixed expressions
1. Compound words:
hyphenated
swimming-pool, English-speaking
or not
bookcase, signpost, backup
2. Phrases
strictly speaking, call it a day, in any case
Fixed expressions contd.
3. Clauses or sentences
What’s the matter, as I was saying, How are
you?
Note: Proverbs and some idioms and clichés are
a particular class of fixed sentence expressions.
All’s well that ends well. No news is good news.
Break a leg! Let’s call it a day!
b) Semi-fixed expressions
Expressions that vary in subject, object, tense of
verb etc.
[take] [something] into account, [hold]
[someone] responsible, [ ] [have] a good
time
Sub-sets of these are phrasal verbs
take up, get away with, put up with
Idioms may be semi-fixed:
[lose] [one’s] head
c) Collocations: words which tend to
link with specific other words
verb or adjective + preposition:
angry (with), afraid (of), wait (for);
adjective + noun:
a tall person / a high building, a quick look / fast
runner.
verb + noun
to wage a war, to tell the truth, to make a mistake, to do
homework, to commit [a crime];
verb + adverb
work hard, sleep soundly
How many chunks and collocations can you find here?
A young emperor penguin took a wrong turn from the Antarctic and ended
up stranded on a New Zealand beach – the first time in 44 years the aquatic
bird has been sighted in the south Pacific country.
Local resident Christine Wilton was taking her dog Millie for a walk on Peka
Peka beach on the North Island's western coast when she discovered the
bird. "It was out of this world to see it ... like someone just dropped it from
the sky," Wilton said.
Conservation experts say the penguin is about 10 months old and stands
about 80cm (32 inches) high. Emperor penguins are the tallest and largest
species of penguin and can grow up to122cm high and weigh more than
34kg (75lbs).
Colin Miskelly, a curator at Te Papa, the Museum of New Zealand, said the
bird was likely to have been born during the last Antarctic winter. He said
emperor penguins can spend months at a time in the ocean, but did not
know what might have caused this particular one to become disoriented.
Miskelly said the penguin appeared healthy and well fed, with plenty of
body fat, and probably came ashore for a rest.
Peter Simpson, a program manager for New Zealand's department of
conservation, said officials are asking people to stand back about 10m from
the creature and to avoid letting dogs near it.
A young emperor penguin took a wrong turn from the Antarctic and ended
up stranded on a New Zealand beach – the first time in 44 years the aquatic
bird has been sighted in the south Pacific country.
Local resident Christine Wilton was taking [her dog] [Millie] for a walk on
[Peka Peka] beach on the [North Island's western] coast when she
discovered the bird. "It was out of this world to see it ... like someone just
dropped it from the sky," Wilton said.
Conservation experts say the penguin is about [10 months] old and stands
[about 80cm (32 inches)] high. Emperor penguins are the tallest and largest
species of [penguin] and can grow up to [122cm] high and weigh more than
34kg (75lbs).
Colin Miskelly, a curator at Te Papa, the Museum of New Zealand, said the
bird was likely to have been born during the [last Antarctic winter]. He said
emperor penguins can spend [months] at a time in the ocean, but did not
know what might have caused this particular one to become disoriented.
Miskelly said the penguin appeared healthy and well fed, with plenty of
body fat, and probably came ashore for a rest.
Peter Simpson, a program manager for New Zealand's department of
conservation, said officials are asking people to stand back about 10m from
the creature and to avoid [lett]ing dogs near it.
2. What do learners need to
know about a lexical item?
Aspects of lexical knowledge:
receptive and productive
Form:
spoken (receptive and productive)
written (receptive and productive)
grammatical variations
Meaning:
denotation
connotation
L1 equivalent
Use
grammatical links
collocations
frequency
register, appropriateness
Other items with associated
meanings
synonyms
antonyms
Associated words in semantic sets (e.g. red,
yellow, green…)
hyponyms (e.g. dog is a hyponym of animal)
superordinates (e.g. animal is a superordinate of
dog, cat…)
Discussion
How important is each for you to teach when
presenting a new item (at the level you are
teaching)?
= essential
=important
?= less important, or not sure
x= not necessary (at this level)
Form and meaning
• spoken form
• written form
• grammatical variants
• denotation
• connotation
• L1 equivalent(s)
Use
• grammatical links
• collocational links
• frequency?
• register, appropriateness?
Associated meanings
• synonyms
• antonyms
• semantic sets
• hyponyms
• superordinates
Form and meaning
• spoken form 
• written form 
• grammatical variants 
• denotation 
• connotation 
• L1 equivalent(s) 
Use
• grammatical links 
• collocational links
• frequency?
• register, appropriateness?
Associated meanings
• synonyms x
• antonyms x
• semantic sets x
• hyponyms x
• superordinates x
Task
What else besides form (spelling, pronunciation)
and meaning (basic, most common meaning) would
you want to teach your students about the
following items (choose a list appropriate for the
level of one of your classes).
Foundation: back begin ready mean(v) right
short time,
Intermediate: absolutely else free responsible save
spend worry
Proficiency: apology praise convenient accurately
foreigner severe update
For example…
Short
Pronunciation (American/British?)
Spelling (sh, or)
The fact that it usually means ‫ קצר‬not ‫נמוך‬
Some common collocations: a short time, a
short story
Task
What else besides form (spelling, pronunciation)
and meaning (basic, most common meaning) would
you want to teach your students about the
following items (choose a list appropriate for the
level of one of your classes).
Foundation: back begin ready mean(v) right
short time,
Intermediate: absolutely else free responsible save
spend worry
Proficiency: apology praise convenient accurately
foreigner severe update
3. The importance of vocabulary
learning
Background research and theory
Laufer, B. (1997). The lexical plight in second
language reading: Words you don't know, words
you think you know, and words you can't guess.
In Coady, J. & T. Huckin (Eds.), Second Language
Vocabulary Acquisition (pp.20-34). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
No text comprehension is possible, either in one’s native
language or in a foreign language, without understanding
the text’s vocabulary. This is not to say that reading
comprehension and vocabulary comprehension are the
same, or that reading quality is determined by vocabulary
alone. Reading comprehension (both in L1 and L2) is also
affected by textually relevant background knowledge and
the application of general reading strategies, such as
predicting the content of the text, recognizing the text
and text structure, and grasping the main idea of the
paragraph. And yet, it has been consistently
demonstrated that reading comprehension is strongly
related to vocabulary knowledge, more strongly than the
other components of reading …(p.20)
In other words:
Vocabulary is not the only factor (also background
knowledge, strategies) but the main one.
Evidence that it is the main predictor of success in
reading comprehension. High correlation bet vocab
knowledge and success in reading comprehension
(Laufer and others)
Syntactic complexity didn’t make any difference.
Reading strategies are usable only if know vocab,
can’t transfer otherwise.
Words are more important than background
knowledge.
Experience and reflection
Can you understand what this text means?
…day, … lion and … bear …be … forest …see…
goat …path… jump …goat …kill …, then start…
fight… …decide …eat ….
As compared to:
One … a …a…were in a. they (Vpast) a ….. on
the …they (Vpast) on the …. and (Vpast) it,
(Vpast) (Ving) to (Vbase form) who would
(Vbase form) it.
Bottom line:
Vocabulary is probably THE most important
component of language proficiency to learn for
comprehension…
… and even more so for production.
BUT
How much time do teachers spend talking about
grammar in lessons? Vocabulary?
How much space in workbooks is occupied by
grammar exercises? Vocabulary?
4. How much vocabulary do
students need to know?
How much vocabulary (%) do you need to
know in order to understand a text?
What would you guess? 80%? 85%? 90%? 95%?
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Answer:
Answer: readers probably need to understand
95-98% of a text in order to understand the
main gist…
… and in order to guess the rest from context
(Schmitt, 2008).
Let’s try it out.
Extract from a speech by Obama:
Can you say what he is talking about?
What the missing items are?
That is the work we began last year. Since the
day I took office, we renewed our focus on the
__________ who __________ our nation. We
have made substantial __________ in our
homeland __________ and disrupted
_________ that threatened to take American
____________.
(86%)
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And now? (95%)
That is the work we began last year. Since the
day I took office, we renewed our focus on the
_________ who threaten our nation. We have
made substantial __________ in our homeland
security and disrupted plots that threatened to
take American lives.
(95%)
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That is the work we began last year. Since the
day I took office, we renewed our focus on the
terrorists who threaten our nation. We have
made substantial investments in our homeland
security and disrupted plots that threatened to
take American lives.
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Conclusion
With 85% of the text unknown, it is difficult to
get the gist.
Even with 95% we cannot be sure of guessing
unknown words correctly.
According to research
…Students need to know 5,000 – 8,000
vocabulary items families in order to understand
an unsimplified text (Schmitt, 2008).
But it appears that most 4- or 5- point students
in 12th grade know about 3000.
Hence - difficulty with the Bagrut reading texts
(60% of the grade).
What can be done?
5. Vocabulary in the Israeli
curriculum and materials
Goals of the vocabulary component in
the curriculum
1. Quantity: To make sure that enough
vocabulary is taught (i.e. a minimum number
of items for each level);
2. Selection: To make sure that the most
important items are covered at elementary
and intermediate levels.
1. Quantity
By the end of 6th grade: 1200 items
By the end of 9th grade, another 2000: 3200
items altogether
By the end of 12th grade, another 2200: 5400
items altogether
Altogether
Foundation
Intermediate
Proficiency
1200 new items
(about 400 a year)
2000 new items
(600-700 a year)
2200 new items
(700-800 a year)
1200 items
3200 items
5400 items
So, assuming students learn English in
school about 30 weeks a year
They should be learning…
… at least 12 new items a week in elementary;
… at least 20 new items a week in Junior High;
…at least 30 new items a week in High School.
Probably in the younger classes, nearly all of
these need to be deliberately taught.
In older classes, some of the responsibility can
be taken by the students themselves.
2. Selection
A core list of items (words and ‘chunks’) that
must be taught.
About half or less of the total number required
according to the table.
Task
If you were composing a list of ‘core’ items that
are essential for learners of English…
… what would be your criteria?
Criteria
Frequency
How do we know which items are most frequent
in the English language?
Intuition?
Research?
Intuition
Which would you say were the top 10-12 most
frequent full verbs in English
(not counting be, do, have, modals like can,
should, might)?
The most common adverbs?
According to research
The most common verbs:
say
go
get
make
see
know
take
think
come
give
look
use
The most common adverbs:
so, then, more, now, just, also, well, only, very,
even
Were your intuitions good?
In any case, intuitions need support from:
corpora
research
teacher judgment
Criteria for inclusion in the Curriculum
1.
2.
3.
4.
Frequency
Practical usefulness (classroom)
Relevance
Easiness
Not necessarily included:
cognates
lexical sets
Why not cognates?
Many are not the same for all the students’ L1
(e.g. banana);
No consensus as to which are the most
important ones;
Teachers and materials writers can select their
own and include.
Why not lexical sets?
The research indicates that words that are a list
of similar items (colors, clothes, parts of the
body) are not learnt well if presented together.
Lexical sets
It appears from research that
learning items in lexical sets (e.g.
names of colors, names of animals,
parts of the body etc.) do not lead
to good learning.
Research on learning semantic sets
Tinkham (1993)
Does it help learners to master a new
set of lexical items if they are all
members of a semantic set (same part
of speech, same kind of meaning: e.g.
clothes, animals)?
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Learners were presented with two sets of items from an artificial language, and
told their ‘meanings’; one set all related to the same domain, the other did not.
shirt = moshee
jacket = umau
sweater = blaikel
rain =moshee
car = blaikel
frog = umau
rain = achen
car = nalo
frog = kawvas
shirt = achen
jacket = kawvas
sweater = nalo
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The learners consistently learned the
unrelated items better.
The research was later replicated, with similar results.
Waring (1998), Erten & Tekin (2008), Papathanasiou
(2009)
When asked, learners said that they found they were
confused because words had similar meanings.
I.e. if you learn two words with similar meanings (or
forms?) the learning of one ‘interferes’ with learning
the other.
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But words linked to each other
syntagmatically and thematically are learnt
well.
e.g. blue + sky is better learnt than blue + red
+ yellow…
mother + love + home …. better learnt than
mother, father, son, daughter, sister, brother…
So…
The vocabulary presented in elementary
textbooks should be based not on semantic
sets or pairs, but on thematic and syntactic
links.
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Further implications 2
The teaching of lexical sets leads to
teaching relatively infrequent words
(e.g toes, purple).
We have an enormous amount of
vocabulary to teach: why waste effort
on infrequent items that will not be
useful to learners?
Further implications 2
Any pairs or groups of words that might get
confused should probably not be taught
simultaneously as new items.
Antonyms: arrive / depart
Synonyms: big / large
Synforms of various kinds:
Homophones: accept / except
Homonyms, homographs: bear, entrance
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Semantic associations may be useful for:
a) The teaching of a new item ‘hooked’ on one
already known which is semantically linked to
it (e.g. teaching miserable when they already
know sad).
b) The design of practice exercises, e.g. ‘odd one
out’ or ‘suggest an opposite’.
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Samples from lists. Note that:
1. Verb past forms provided only when irregular
2. Chunks are provided under ‘headword’
alphabetical order: so in front of after from
3. Meaning illustrated by brief sample uses, e.g.
grade
I study in sixth grade.
friend
from
in front of
full
funny
game
garden
get, got
girl
give, gave
glad
glass
go, went
go on, went
on
going to
good
good at
goodbye
grade
I study in sixth
grade.
great
green
grow, grew
guess
half
half past
hand
hang
happen
happy
hard
have, had
have to, had to
he
head
hear, heard
hello
help
her
herself
here
high
him
himself
his
hold, held
home
hope
hot
hour
house
how
How are you?
hundred
I'm hungry
idea
if
immediately
important
million
mine
The car is mine.
minimum
modern
moment
more
more and more
more or less
Moslem/ Muslim
(n/adj)
mountain
mouth
museum
must
nation
nature
neat
necessary
neither …nor
nervous
newspaper
noise
none
normal
north
not only
note (n)
note (v)
notice
a number of
object (n)
occur
odd
Your behavior is odd.
offer (v)
offer (n)
office
oil
once again
once more
at once
one another
move onto …
operate
operation
opinion
in my opinion
opportunity
opposite
ordinary
orange (n)
orange (adj)
order (v)
order (n)
put in order
in order to
How can such requirements be
implemented in practice?
1. Textbook writers
• All the ‘core’ items in materials for
Foundation and Intermediate levels.
• A large number of items in order to enable
learners to reach the target quantity.
2. Teachers
• Awareness of need to teach most frequent
items.
• Awareness of need to teach also ‘chunks’.
• Awareness of need to teach a lot of
vocabulary.
So both writers and teachers need…
… a repertoire of effective teaching strategies to
help them achieve good vocabulary learning by
the students.